In the battery making art, sandwiched assemblies of battery plates and elements as assembled for disposition into battery cells have, for a long time, been effected by hand. Such manual assembly techniques have not always been satisfactory, due to inherent stacking irregularities, and also due to the possibilities of human errror, for example, in obtaining assemblies having either too many or too few plates. In other instances, the separators may be provided in inadvertently inverted form, and such may not be detected until a much later stage of battery assembly, or even thereafter, wherein detection only comes to light as an incident of battery malfunction.
In the more recent past, apparatus and techniques have been developed for mechanically feeding battery elements, particularly battery plates, and in some instances the separators that are used for disposition between the plates, whereby stacks of alternate plates and separators are deposited onto a conveyor. Such techniques have generally involved strike arm type of mechanical feeders, whereby an arm, lever or the like directly engages the plates or separators, generally by pushing them out of a hopper onto a conveyor. With such techniques, there is always the possibility of damage to the rather fragile plates, and even to the separators. This is particularly true as the plates become thinner, most especially in the case of separators wherein advances in material construction permit the use of separators far thinner than separators theretofore used. By mechanically striking a separator or plate from the bottom of a hopper and causing the same to be ejected onto a conveyor, not only are limitations imposed upon the type of plates and separators that are susceptible to such treatment, but physical damage to the materials being handled can be encountered. These techniques also have a general lack of ability to quickly change from one size plate-separator combination to another, to accommodate batteries of different sizes. Moreover, such techniques also either make no provision for accomodating assemblies or sandwiches having different numbers of plates, thereby requiring such changes to be effected manually, or else such equipment generally requires shutting-down for extended periods of time while changes are effected.
The present invention is directed to providing a novel apparatus that is mechanized for quick change, for purposes of providing versatility to the apparatus, whereby when it is desired to change from one plate-separator size to another, such changes may rapidly be effected; and whereby, when it is desired to change to battery plate sandwiches having different numbers of plates, these changes may also be rapidly be effected. It is also desired to provide apparatus and techniques whereby the assembly is completely mechanized, whereby plates and separators may be extracted from sources and stacked in precisely the number desired for a given battery cell size, and wherein such stacking is with great precision. It is also desired, and incorporated in the present invention, whereby many sandwiches of battery plate and separator elements may be undergoing assembly concurrently. The present invention is directed to ease of size change as dictated by different sized battery cells requiring differently sized separators and plates, for reasons of versatility.
Also, in the prior art, separators and plates have become substantially thinner so that handling by manual engagement techniques produces damage as has been discussed above, often resulting in breakage. The present invention is addressed to this problem by providing withdrawal of plates and separators from their sources by vacuum withdrawal techniques, whereby such articles may be picked-up with precision, without risking the picking-up of more than one such article from the same source at the same time. It is recognized that techniques may have been developed for vacuum pick up of articles. However, the present invention is addressed to providing a novel technique whereby vacuum picking-up can be accomplished with respect to battery plate elements and battery separator elements, both of which have certain although different degrees of porosity. The present invention is therefore addressed to this problem and provides a technique whereby vacuum heads approach but do not touch the plates and separators to be withdrawn from their hopper sources, but whereby the negative pressure causes a single plate or separator in each instance to be withdrawn into engagement with the vacuum head there being utilized.